{"id":43835,"date":"2026-04-08T06:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T10:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=43835"},"modified":"2026-04-08T07:58:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:58:24","slug":"killer-combo-super-angulon-and-pan-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/killer-combo-super-angulon-and-pan-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Killer Combo\u2014Super Angulon and Pan-X"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

May 13, 1984: I was four weeks away from graduating high school. On that day I traveled with Bob Buck and met friends on the ‘B&A West End’ (Conrail’s former Boston & Albany climb over Washington Hill).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Middlefield, Massachusetts the deep chug of big General Electric diesels alerted us to a westward freight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working with my Leica IIIA fitted with my dad’s 21mm Super Anglon, I exposed this series of black & white photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Super Angulon was a favorite lens, but best used judiciously. Another key to the success of these photos was my film choice : Kodak’s Panatomic-X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rated at ISO 32, this super fine grain black & white emulsion offered super sharp images and wonderful tonality. The difficulty was its slow speed. It was really only practical on very bright days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at my many photos made in the early 1980s, I wish I’d used Panatomic-X more often, rather than my preferred film of time: Kodak Tri-X (rated at ISO 400). If I’d had the resources, I sould have had multiple cameras with different types of film in each. Oh wait . . . I think I had another camera that day . . . and it was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome 200. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those slides are for another post on another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Conrail had just ten GE C30-7s, locomotives 6600-6609, and in the the 1980s these were often assigned to the Boston Line. In mid-1984, the railroad began receiving its order for fifty C30-7As. Where the C30-7s had 16 cylinder engine that feature a louder heavier sound, the C30-7As, used a 12-cyldiner engine, and I believe were fitted with more effective sound emissions controls, which muted the sounds of their exhaust. The three C30-7s working this heavy westbound shook the earth at Middlefield that morning nearly 42 years ago!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Tracking the Light Looks Back at Conrail!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 13, 1984.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[6060,10,6108,48],"tags":[5031,6056,5043,5128,8571],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Conrail_May13_1984_Middlefield_MA_\u00a9BrianSolomon22546.jpg?fit=2048%2C1364","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-bp1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43835"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43835"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43945,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43835\/revisions\/43945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}